I turned to go and then something occurred to me.
“Mister Dundas,” I said. “Have you got a screenplay? One you wrote?”
He shook his head.
“You never wrote a screenplay?”
“Not me,” he said.
“Promise?”
He grinned. “I promise,” he said.
I went back to my room. I thumbed through my U.K. hardback of Sons of Man and wondered that anything so clumsily written had even been published, wondered why Hollywood had bought it in the first place, why they didn’t want it, now that they had bought it.
I tried to write “The Artist’s Dream” some more, and failed miserably. The characters were frozen. They seemed unable to breathe, or move, or talk.
I went into the toilet, pissed a vivid yellow stream against the porcelain. A cockroach ran across the silver of the mirror.
I went back into the sitting room, opened a new document, and wrote:
I’m thinking about England in the rain,
a strange theatre on the
pier: a trail
of fear and magic, memory and pain.
The fear should be of going bleak insane,
the magic should be like a fairytale.
I’m thinking about England in the rain.
The loneliness is harder to explain—
an empty place inside me where I fail,
of fear and magic, memory and pain.
I think of a magician and a skein
of truth disguised as lies. You wear a veil.
I’m thinking about England in the rain…
The shapes repeat like some bizarre refrain
and here’s a sword, a hand, and there’s a grail
of fear and magic, memory and pain.
The wizard waves his wand and we turn pale,
tells us sad truths, but all to no avail.
I’m thinking about England, in the rain